Friday, 17 February 2012

List of Ten: a student's guide to reading week

Hey Students!!

With Reading Week on the horizon, XPACE has compiled a List of Ten things to do. Since sleeping-in and procrastination are usually at the top of our to-do lists during this week, why not substituteÂ essays & projects with some great events going on in our city. For exhibitions, films, shopping or skating, keep on reading....

1. > Opening Reception @ XPACE

Friday, February 24, 7-11pmPlease join us for an Opening Reception of our three spaces!

Everything Under the MoonÂ is the old-time shadow play re-imagined, a fantastical work of theatre told through hand-animated projected image and narrative song. This moving, absurd and heroic adventure follows two small, winged creatures on an urgent journey to save themselves.

The February 23 performance will be followed by a longer talkshow, featuring Shary Boyle and Christine Fellows in conversation with Jon Davies, Assistant Curator atÂ The Power PlantÂ Contemporary Art Gallery.Join us on February 18 for an opening night party after the performance, presented with The Power Plant, and launching the World Stage 2012 season.

Skate seven days a week on the city's winter gem by the lake. The Natrel Rink has an indoor change room with lockers and washrooms; hot food & drinks are available at the rink-side restaurant, Lakeside EATS.FREE ADMISSION!

RAFF brings together documentaries on visual art and artists, including a selection of shorts that originated online. The festival continues to grow, with 20 films profiling Canadian and international arts who work in all media. For more information, check out RAFF's website.

The ScotiabankÂ CONTACT Photography FestivalÂ and Toronto Image Works Gallery co-present new works by Alex Kisilevich â€“ a 2010 Portfolio Reviews Award Exhibition.Alex Kisilevich's practice investigates the duality of photography, with its capability to imply truth while simultaneously subverting it. His new photographs employ aspects of sculpture, installation and performance to touch on ideas of distinction and assimilation. The images, full of pathos and absurdity, continue to explore human subjectivity as well as the relationships we form with the things around us.

Launching the 2012 indigiFLIX series is a shorts program featuring work from Genie Award-winning director Lisa Jackson, 2009 TIFF Canadaâ€™s Top Ten director Helen Haig-Brown, as well as Zoe Leigh Hopkins, Darryl Nepinak and Keesic Douglas, who have all had works programmed at the prestigious Berlinale Film Festival.

In Realia Series: American Tourister, artist Juan Ortiz-Apuy has modified an original set of the iconic American Tourister travel suitcase to mechanically inflate and deflate as passersby traverse the sidewalk in front of the Whippersnapper Gallery. Connotative of the necessarily physical characteristic of mobility, Ortiz-Apuyâ€™s suitcases explore the complex narratives surrounding the movement of people in a globalizing world. One in which borders are emphasized or de-emphasized where it suits the free flow of capital, where global markets usurp national identities, and where exclusion is enforced with palpable consequences; refusal, imprisonment, or violence.American Tourister speaks to the paradoxes behind globalization though the experience of travel.

8. > Student Shop @ OCAD U Student Gallery

TheÂ OCAD U Student ShopÂ is set to launch! We're celebrating with an launch party, which will happen in conjunction with the exhibitionÂ reception for 'To Precipitate Shadow' on FebruaryÂ 23 (6-8pm). The OCAD U Student Shop will be housed inside the OCAD U Student Gallery and will feature sellable wares by students and alumni. A selection of our treasures will beÂ displayed in a suite of magical, glass pyramid cabinets by 'Tables, Chairs & Other Unrelated Objects' curator, Vincent Joseph Monastero. All sales under $50 will go directly to the artist/designer; and all sales over $50 will be subject to the 25% commission rate that we apply to all gallery sales. The opening line-up includes Julie Moon, Winnie Truong, Fantasy Camp, Blood of the Young, Lisa Visser and more! Hope to see you at the launch!

InterAccess is pleased to present Double Back, an exhibition by Toronto-based collaborative duo Jillian Ross and Liam Wylie, from February 17 to March 24, 2012. In Double Back, Ross and Wylie explore the relationship between "the embodied phenomenological experience of travelling through a physical gallery space and the disembodied experience of navigating across one digitally." The exhibition features a number of paintings and sculptures displayed in InterAccess' physical gallery space and recreated in an accompanying virtual gallery space modelled on InterAccess. Presented side by side, these two 'spaces' highlight the difference in forms of representation and viewership between the physical and digital domains. The physical objects, evocative of the construction materials used in the fabrication of InterAccess' gallery space, display a weight and solidity not found in the virtual objects, whose perfect surfaces and precision would be impossible to achieve by hand.

Tour starts atÂ 12noonÂ at 80 Spadina Ave (Suite #501) with the Koffler Gallery Off-Site exhibition, and then departs for Blackwood Gallery, Art Gallery of York University and Doris McCarthy Gallery.To make a reservation, contact the Blackwood Gallery at 905-828-3789 orÂ blackwood.gallery@utoronto.caÂ byÂ Friday February 24.This event is FREE.

KOFFLER GALLERY, OFF-SITE PROJECTStarting at 12noon with a tour of the exhibition by Flavio Trevisan.Flavio Trevisan:Museum of the Represented CityJanuary 19 to April 8, 2012BLACKWOOD GALLERY, UTMBus arrives at 1pm for a tour of the exhibition by Juliana Zalucky.Landscapes events reproductedSeripop (Chloe Lum & Yannick Desranleau)January 18 to March 4, 2012

ART GALLERY of YORK UNIVERSITYBus arrives at 2:30 pm for a tour of the exhibition by Emelie Chhangur.Will MunroHistory, Glamour, MagicJanuary 11 to March 11, 2012